#393 Why is lifelong learning important?
Why is lifelong learning important?
From the idea to implementation
Lifelong learning is often mentioned in conversations.
As a goal, as a resolution, as an approach that should always be followed. There is often a large gap between the moments mentioned in conversations and the reality.
Today's working world often expects lifelong learning. I have completed my Executive MBA in London alongside my full-time self-employment. Last week was the graduation with the usual UK ceremony.
Why is lifelong learning important, and why is it still the exception?
Problem
Many people resolve to start learning again. Nobody wants to be the person that many people know in the office: good at their job but disconnected in development, sitting alone and dully working away, while many would rather wish that this person leaves voluntarily. Nobody wants to end up like that. Nevertheless, the intention to continue learning is usually followed by the statement that one would like to work first after completing the initial qualification. Later, you would dedicate yourself to education again. The focus then quickly shifts, and reasons why further education is not possible are followed even more rapidly. There is no time and too much to do; others are not continuing their education either, and everything is going well so far. With the next disruptive change in the world of work, it is precisely those people who will quickly face severe problems and then have to chase after the missed educational moments. Doing so is costly and time-consuming.
Reasons
But why should lifelong learning be relevant at all?
Rapid technological development is one of the main reasons. In the past, trends were often long-lasting and took years to implement, but today, the working world is much more agile. Cloud services had barely even been properly implemented when the next megatrend, artificial intelligence (AI), became visible and relevant to the world of work. The dynamic labour market demands that lifelong learning is not only set as a goal but will also be implemented to become visible in your CV. Those who stand still will fall behind and bear the consequences themselves. Globalisation is another aspect of this. You are no longer competing with local or regional markets. Today, every person with an Internet connection takes part in global exchange.
What's more, especially in times of economic uncertainty, proof of ongoing education shows that you not only have the knowledge and skills but are also prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty. This momentum keeps you relevant in the labour market and in demand as a talent.
More about these aspects in this week's podcasts; see links below.
Implementation
Be the first to realise the benefits you receive here. Personal development, maintaining high relevance in the labour market, career development, demonstrating flexibility, adaptability and resilience. You will also gain an excellent network.
Make sure that you only work with qualified people and providers. When it comes to lifelong learning, ask about the provider's credentials. Those who do not demonstrate lifelong learning themselves are in no position to advise others as customers. If you are now wondering what lifelong learning looks like for me as the author of these lines, please click here.
Knowledge must be scientifically sound. The person must have real practical experience. A methodological and didactic qualification is just as important. And if they are also entertaining, you have chosen the right person.
Conclusion: lifelong learning secures you. It supports your life situations anytime, anywhere. Through lifelong learning, your life is shaped in a sustainably positive way.
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More on this topic in this week's podcast: Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the podcast transcript, read below.
Is excellent leadership important to you?
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Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn
Website: www.NB-Networks.biz
Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, moderator.
Podcast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
Lifelong learning. You probably heard of that. And most likely, the first thought is, yeah. Yeah. I heard about lifelong learning. And then usually it becomes reasonably quiet because many people think, yeah. I have this idea of, remember, doing that that that master's degree or that additional nursing qualification or, oh, yeah.
I wanted to do this certificate to be to be the next guy who gets promoted, the next person to be promoted in our security team. However, well, you know, life happens and then you simply move on. Lifelong learning often talked about and rarely ever implemented from idea to actually implementing it, realizing it, making it real is usually a huge gap. And the question is why does that happen? Lifelong learning is often the talk of the day in either people development departments or when board say how do you get ready for the future of work, how can you protect yourself against any kind of change that might negatively affect you. And this lifelong learning is something which happened as a topic because I received a 3 digit amount of messages, which I never ever expected to receive. After some people saw on social media that two things happened.
The first thing is I just completed my executive MBA. Thank you very much for the congratulations, and hats off for the how how how quickly people reacted to that is absolutely amazing. So I completed my executive MBA in London, United Kingdom, and also I completed my professional training on AI. As you know, I told you last week here on the podcast, I shut my mouth on AI. I got my professional qualification, which took me roughly half a year in total. I did that at the Wharton Business School, which is the number one business school in the world and the University of Pennsylvania, which is a top 10 university. I don't tell you this to, to show off.
This has a point here. When we talk about lifelong learning, we should probably do lifelong learning by ourselves. However, we always know that certain people in organization, maybe you have someone of your colleagues in mind now or on your mind where you think, yeah. They are good at what they're doing. They're maybe even very good. Then they might even be excellent in what they're doing. However, as soon as something new appears, they say, no. No. No. I do it the usual way.
No matter what you wanna do, I I I just do it as I did it before. And that is exactly the problem. People who just stopped to develop. And when you look in today's working world today, everyone there expects you to be a lifelong learner. Many people talk about it and then they don't follow-up. The question is why does that happen and also why is lifelong learning important for you? Let's start with the problem here because many people say, hey, I'm going to keep on learning in my whole life.
You still have some people, not many, but remember when you sometimes see usually when degrees happen once once or twice a year depending on when people graduate, you often see that suddenly people say, well, that was that was education for me, and now I'm I'm getting into the real business world, so I'm not gonna do any kind of education for the future. These people quickly fail or realize that the learning has to continue. Some people say I'd like to continue learning, and then usually, the the standard statement is, look, I learned so long. I invested so much in this. Now I just want to keep on working, make some money, move somewhere I want to live and later I will do my additional qualification, my next certificate, later I will do the bachelor's degree, the master's degree, whatever qualification it is and then silence. And as often life moves on circumstances change, the focus wanders off, your focus somewhere else suddenly and then you say hey I actually don't even have the time to do any kind of qualification because I work full time, I have family, children, or this and that hobby. I don't have the time to do education.
Also, I I see many people around me in my organization. None of them do any kind of additional qualification. So so it seems to work. So I don't do this qualification. Let's do it later. So you postpone, postpone, postpone, and you stay there with your primary or very first and probably single one proper education that you have on your CV. And as soon as the next disruptive change shows up, you're suddenly the first one who has a major problem because suddenly the organization says, well, I think the job can now be done without you.
Have a good time and see you then. Suddenly, you're there with no job.
And, well, what should I say? It gets challenging from there, especially when you have to catch up with educational demands. This can take weeks, months, or worst case, years where you are unemployable. And let's face it, it's maybe not only your fault but also your fault. And that's something we want to prevent. So what are the reasons why this lifelong learning happens? Because I don't know how it is with you.
I was born in Hamburg, Northern Germany. I grew up in even high more north more north of Hamburg. I grew up in very much very northern Germany, and lifelong learning was a topic there. The usual CV or the usual life looked the following. You I grew up in a small city after you did school. We had a different tier so school since so you got your school degree, then you either chose to have vocational training or you did university. And then you got one degree out of that, either the vocational training degree or the university degree, and then you get one job and you do this job usually for the rest of your life.
Sometimes very rarely people change jobs maybe once in a decade or even even more rarely. You usually anyone in this village or in this small town knew that person works here, this person was there, anyone found their place, do your job, we all get along and then that's it. You do this for 40 years and then you retire. This time is over. And why did it why does this happen? Where does this lifelong learning suddenly come from? 1st, we have a massive a a a massively accelerating technological development.
Remember when we have these IT trends which lasted for years? Oh, now we have Windows computers. We don't have MS DOS anymore. You don't have the command prompt. You don't have a mouse and you have a yeah. You look. You have this screen and you have a graphical interface.
And then years years went in to learn this, how to implement this in in in organization. And today, the speed is, oh, look. We have this this this cloud thing.
Cloud should be implemented. And and before even organizations have cloud properly implemented, AI showed up. And now you have next level AI, collaborative AI, and then whatnot in AI happening. So the technological advancements are quicker than ever. The same time, you have a way more dynamic workforce, but also way more dynamic job market. The workforce tries to adapt at least some of them try to adapt to it, but the dynamic job market means the demands might face quickly might might change quickly. And I give you a very simple example.
In Germany, at the end of the nineties, they said, oh, look. We have too many people sitting in production facilities, and we have a high demand of people working in offices. So let's retrain these people, and let's train unemployed people to become office workers. And they trained and retrained tens of thousands of people only to find out that while they did that and they trained millions of people to become office workers, they said, oh, well, actually, we actually, we don't we don't need that many office workers anymore because we don't have computers then. They do a lot of stuff that was formally done manually. So we need people with IT qualifications, and there you are. And then they could retrain these people again.
So it's very dynamic what's happening here. And I can tell you from my village, my village was heavily affected by automation. When I was 14 years old, that's the time when I started working. Before that, due to law and regulation, I wasn't allowed to do so. At the age of 14, I started to work in a local factory production unit, 3 shift system, pretty hard work, all physical work. There was I was basically standing at a conveyor, but that was one of the jobs. And you put different things on hooks, and then you put color on them, and you had to wear a mask for that, and then you had to turn them around and put color on them as well.
Everything from from taking the piece of metal, put it on the hood, put putting the color on it, everything was manual work. All of that is automatic today.
The jobs are gone. At my village, the small town I grew up in, was heavily affected by unemployment suddenly. Hundreds of jobs suddenly were gone. And this affects communities tremendously. When suddenly you're on a football club where you realize 1 third of your friends suddenly have no work and no income. And now hats off to the people who said, look, we have to deal with it. And a couple of people I knew in my football club said, well, now it's the state.
Well, there's some state has to give me a job so or the state has to retrain me. So, please please tell me what I should do. And for me that always was too much of entitlement thinking. Some some people, and these people only speaking so sociologically here, would usually be called working class people. Many people of them just waited for what's going to happen, and it may or may not have been going on too well from there. And some of the people, especially people who I knew very well, and I I give you 2 examples. 2 of the people who were actually the people who, gave assignments to referees in my football club.
Both people from working class, they were basically working in a production facility, taking cardboard, folding it in different ways, and then creating boxes out of that, which, of course, was automated. The job was done immediately after they found out that machines can do that. And these people went to the job office, the job center, and said, I want to be retrained as an office worker with IT skills. And then for 6 months, some of them for 18 months, went to be retrained. And that happened in Hamburg. That's an hour trip every morning, 1 hour going there, 1 hour back. And, of course, the income isn't great when you're unemployed.
So you see, 6 to 18 months, some of them, by the way, 2 years, were retrained, and suddenly, they were working for a bank. And that is something where I say hats off to these people who understood how life actually works. There might be situations where it isn't too pleasant. You have to learn new things. And I can tell you when I did my executive m MBA and finance showed up, I'm not a math person, And I saw these films and thought, oh my god. The nightmare just returned. When I did the AI education with Wharton Business School and the University of Pennsylvania, and they started the statistics, that is a kind of math that is almost cryptic to me.
It actually is cryptic in some case, but that's a different pun here. So I had to learn all of that because sometimes education is not pleasant. Sometimes you have to learn something where you say, well, this is not really for me, but it's needed, and I will learn it right now. When you, for the first time, sit in front of Microsoft Excel and someone tells you, oh, it's equal age lookup. You probably sit there and think, what the hell is going on here? But it's important to learn the skill. And this is why you need to be proactive.
The dynamic job market meets with globalization. I know that some people say, oh, I'm an opponent to globalization. Being an opponent in globalization in the in the trade and marketplaces we have is like saying you're an opponent to gravity. It's there. If you like it or not, it's there. But that's a different topic. So the dynamic job market means you have to stay current on the job market.
Also, we have an ongoing economic flexibility, which also means economic in insecurities. It isn't the fact that suddenly you have an employer who says, well, you've been here for 38 years. Usually, we don't need you anymore, but we will keep you for 2 years as a thank you for your services. I I roughly know one company that has one person that is on a position like that. Most companies say, sorry. We don't need you anymore. Thank you very much.
It was nice. You had a bit of money, and then you leave. Money gets taxed, and then the money you got isn't enough to retire on. Very important is the dynamic job market, the globalization, and the economic flexibility including the economic insecurities and risks. These mean that you need to stay current with your education and that is why lifelong learning happens. It is impossible to say, I do this thing for the next 40 years, or I don't know many jobs that that still can do that. Maybe if you are someone and you you are painter and you sell your paintings, you're you're successful with that, Paulie, you can go with that.
If AI doesn't suddenly replace you because people like AI art and by the way, I don't. But hardly any business model works without disruptive changes, and you have to stay current on the matter. The question is, how do you implement the whole thing now? And first, of course, we have to answer the question, what is the advantage of joining the lifelong learning track? And I can tell you, I will not stop learning. I don't plan to stop. Also, it's easier to go on with education compared to just stopping it and then getting back into the learning mode, which is way more difficult as you probably know by your own experience.
So advantages are besides your personal development, of course, you stay relevant in the job market. Believe me. When I posted that I got the executive MBA and I got a business school number 1 and top 10 university, Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, qualification artificial intelligence plus executive MBA in London, people reacted to this. And as I'm self employed, bookings didn't go down from that to put it mildly.
It was quite quite an amazing ride. So stay relevant, and that is what education does with you. You stay relevant on the job market. It gives you career push, obviously. Anyone now knows, any employer where you apply knows you are able to adapt to different situations, a tremendously important skill in a world where change is omnipresent. And, of course, one side effect is the network you have. The network you build up during your education.
And I give you a very simple example here as well. During my executive MBA, there was one person in the US, a person with 4 children in the house to pay off. And on December 1st, they said the company is going bust. You have 14 days of payment and then you're unemployed on the 15th December. And he put that in a group and say, hey. These are my skills.
I'm looking for a job. If you hear anything, please let me know. Before Christmas, he had a new job, and the job was given to him because he performed on the executive MBA and someone said, I need someone exactly like you. And these networks will help you until the end of all days. However, there's always a hook. However, you need to work together with qualified vendors. If you go to an inspirational speaker, motivational speaker, any kind of singing, dancing, clapping, new age, pseudoscientific, self development something, and you give an employer or you apply it an employer with the self made printed certificates from private people, of course, no one takes you seriously because people will actually say you lack any kind of reasonable skill to justify investments and you show it because you can't even handle your own money because you picked the wrong education here.
I don't wanna call this education. Singing, dancing, clapping, motivational, inspirational, chumbawamba has nothing to do with education whatsoever. So you need to see who are qualified vendors and it doesn't need to be university degree, but there are different options. You can have either university degree or you can go to place like edX or Coursera just to name 2 where you have classes from universities with university credited courses, not degrees, but courses that that simply show that you you can do something. There are qualified vendors with different labels on the market, but please check for at least at least 2 out of 3 boxes to be ticked.
Box number 1. The knowledge needs to be scientifically sound. It needs to be founded in science. If someone says, oh, I could tell you. Here's my wisdom of the day. And then you have some speaker guru. That's already all nonsense.
Don't follow any of these speakers. They're all useless. So when someone says, oh, here's the wisdom of the day. Do what you like, and money will follow. That's the biggest pile of nonsense I've heard in a long time. By the way, someone posted just under one of these inspirational motivational posts where a speaker said do what you like and money will follow. One of the comments was I just opened a beer went to the toilet now sitting with my dog watching TV I'm waiting for the money.
Good point here. And, by the way, money didn't follow. So it needs to be it needs to be based on scientific evidence. So please check, can the vendor prove where they have the knowledge from? And, by the way, when the vendor tells you or any kind of person that wants to sell you education and they talk about lifelong learning and you have to invest in yourself, ask the person, please show me your track record of lifelong learning. And, of course, some people might now wonder, Braban, show me yours. Go on LinkedIn.
Go on LinkedIn. Go on education, and you will see my track record of lifelong learning with every single bit of university and science you want to see. So I'm walking the talk here. So step number 1, scientifically sound knowledge, must be based in science. Number 2, it needs to be relevant. You need to you need to speak to people who've been there, done that, who come from real world practice. That's the second thing where you need to tick the box.
So scientifically sound based in science and then been there done that real world experience, people who've actually done it. The third thing is optional, but it's nice if if these people are somehow I don't want to say entertaining, but at least they are they are qualified to methodologically to just present to you good presenters, people you like to listen to, people you like to follow when they explain something. So so so so they they need to have the methods and the didactics to do that. These are the three boxes. So Science box must be ticked. Real world practice box must be ticked. The entertaining good presenter box should be ticked, doesn't need to be, but it's nice if it has.
Because I can tell you it has a tremendous impact. I still remember from the executive MBA when I started the finance model, I thought, oh my god. This is going to be so bad. And the professor we had, this was the first person that truly made me highly interested following financial scientific evidence. So it is possible. Look at these boxes. Wrapping all this up. Conclusion. Lifelong learning ensures and promotes your life situation in a positive way.
By the way, anytime and everywhere, your life will be better and sustainably more positive when you put yourself in the position of being a lifelong learner. And I wish you all the best doing so. And when you now say, woah, that is quite a bit of work. Yes. It is. So feel free to contact me when you have any kind of questions. In the show notes of this podcast, you find, first, my email address nbnbhyphenetworks. com. Feel free to email me there.
Second1 is my LinkedIn. Feel free to connect with me on there, and then we can check there as well. 3rd is my website nbhyphennetworks. biz. You also find the transcript of this show note, the transcript of this podcast in the show notes. Better to say, the transcript is on my website. You find it there.
The second thing is please go to expert.nbhyphennetworks.com and register your email address. That's very simple. You only receive one email every Wednesday morning for live sessions. When you receive that Wednesday email, which is 100% content, add free guarantee, then you can say, that you have full access to all the podcasts I have published, full access to all the articles because some people like to read over listening, and then you can forward the articles and whatnot you wanna do to every podcast as an article. And the third thing is you see all the data. When is the next live session? You see the date, you see the time, and you see the link, the URL to access that live session directly.
I'm looking forward to seeing you there. The third aspect, however, is the most important one. Apply apply apply what you heard in this podcast because only when you apply what you heard, you will see the positive outcome that you obviously want to see in your life and in your organization. And I wish you all the best doing so. If you have any kind of questions, contact me anytime. I answer every single message on any platform within 24 hours or less. Looking forward to hearing from you there.
And at the end of the podcast, there's only one thing left for me to say. Thank you very much for your time.